


Process of Elimination

by Mad_Maudlin



Series: However Improbable [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crimes, Gen, Police, antics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-05
Updated: 2010-09-05
Packaged: 2017-10-11 11:42:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/112067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They always give Lestrade the weird ones.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Process of Elimination

**Author's Note:**

> This is a follow-on to my story [However Improbable](http://archiveofourown.org/works/110612) and really isn't going to make any sense without it. I just made up Lestrade's first name, though ACD gives an initial "G." in The Canon.

Detective Work  
By Mad Maudlin

He doesn't know how he gets into these things. Probably it's something to do with Holmes, and the common knowledge that he is the only man on the force who can handle him. (To the extent Holmes ever permits himself to be "handled," of course.) Possibly it's due to his Holmes-enhanced arrest record, which is, he is not shy to say, pretty damn good. It's remotely likely that somebody, somewhere, hates him.

In any case, they always give Greg Lestrade the weird ones.

"Another smash-up," Donovan called, juggling her phone so she could scribble down the address. "Coffee shop, nothing stolen, no sign of entry. Just like the others."

Lestrade read her upside-down scribbling, then put another pin in the map—they were doing this the old-fashioned way, and he'd put up with the dirty looks from the facilities people later. A ribbon of bright-colored pins wound their way across the paper London, each one corresponding to a smashed window, a scratched-up car, some other act of public destruction that had materialized during the night. No murders yet—and he prayed it'd stay that way, even if he was theoretically supposed to be a homocide detective—but the sheer length of the spree was creating a different set of headaches. They'd be paying enough overtime today to buy a medium-sized Icelandic bank.

Donovan transferred another call to her phone, listened, grimaced. "Yes...what? What do you mean? ...okay, yes, I understand...thanks." She hung up and looked warily at Lestrade. "That was the same address. Says they also found a hole punched in a skip behind the building."

"What d'you mean, a hole?" Lestrade demanded.

"I mean a _hole,"_ she said. "That was the constable on the scene. He says it looks like something took a battering ram to the damn thing. Caved in the entire side and broke it open."

"Jesus fucking Christ." Lestrade considered his box of pins, but his hasty color-coding scheme did not have an option for exploding skips. He was going to need more pins soon, anyway; the first wave of reports had started coming in close-to-real time, but a second wave had hit as people began to wake up and go about their business, and for every crime that was reported by a citizen the constables on the scene were finding one or two of five other signs of the night's preceding anarchy.

Donovan's phone rang, again. _Many, many_ pins.

His own mobile beeped, and he snatched at it, half-hoping—but no, it was a picture message from Anderson, who was officially in charge of trying to collect forensic evidence from a four-mile-long crime scene. _You were asking about CCTV?_ the caption said, and the photograph showed a camera that had been ripped from its mount. As if for good measure, the lens end was completely flattened. Lestrade couldn't tell from the resolution of the picture but he thought there was a smear of blood on it as well.

Why did they always give him the weird ones?

Donovan hung up the phone and added a green pin to a tight cluster. "Pensioner reported somebody tore down her garden fence and mangled her roses. Got a unit on the way to check for evidence."

"We don't need any more evidence," Lestrade grumbled. "We've got evidence coming out of our arseholes. It just doesn't make any _sense."_

"I think that's why they pay us the big money, sir," Donovan said, bone-dry.

He scowled at her, and at the map for good measure. The destruction followed an obvious path, though it was indirect, looping and winding aimlessly from a point just east of Marleybone Station all the way out to Ealing. His first instinct was to blame joyriders--except the route ran the wrong way down one-way streets, through pedestrian zones, down alleys too narrow for cars (alleys now sporting blood stains and inexplicable gouges in the brickwork, not to mention at least one formerly serviceable fire escape that now looked like modern art) and at one point smack through the center of Hyde Park. So the vandals had to have been on foot—except, to cover that amount of ground, based on the time lines they'd established..._fuck._

They'd found plenty of forensic evidence—footprints matching a man's shoe, pieces of torn clothing, blood. A rather worrisome amount of blood, really, which may have been part of the reason the mess had been dumped in Lestrade's lap, though so far no hospitals had reported anything out of the ordinary and they still hadn't recovered any actual victims. Plenty of people had overheard the racket, but there were no actual eyewitnesses, no CCTV—and tampering with the cameras would seem to suggest that there had been planning here, more forethought than drunken joyriders would usually possess. But planning also implied some kind of goal, not just wanton destruction...and a destination...

Donovan tapped him on the shoulder; she had the phone muffled against her blazer. "Sir, we've got something. Someone broke into an Oxfam in Greenford this morning, here--"

She pointed near one of the pins in the map, blue for a bus shelter; Lestrade rechecked the address and noted that the bench had been prised loose and tossed into the street in pieces. "So we've got another smash-up," he said.

"Not a smash-up," she said. "Volunteer who reported it said the door was locked as usual, but somebody had got inside and went through the men's clothing and shoes. They're still trying to work out what was taken."

Lestrade blinked. On one hand, it could be a complete coincidence, even a distraction. On the other, if this was the first time the vandals took anything, and the first time they bothered to cover their tracks... "Any cameras inside the store?" he asked, hopefully.

Donovan repeated the question into the phone, then shook her head.

Well, it was something. Or maybe nothing. He could think of a lot of reasons someone would need a change of clothes after a night like this, but if they'd been willing to smash windows and bash in doors all over the rest of the city, why bother with picking locks at the end of the night? "Call Anderson and get him over there. That shop is our first priority for now."

While Donovan relayed the orders, Lestrade looked back at his map, and then at his mobile, which stubbornly refused to ring. He'd already texted Holmes nineteen times and tried to call him three, and it wasn't even nine o'clock yet. Maybe he had decided that mere vandalism was beneath him. Maybe he occupied with something else. Maybe he was in one of those fits where he wouldn't see or speak to anyone for weeks at a go—though those had become less frequent since Watson had turned up. Come to think of it, maybe he should try contacting Watson instead. No, no, he wasn't that desperate yet. Maybe dangling a nice locked-room puzzle in Holmes' face would coax him out...

"Inspector!"

"What _now?"_

Donovan had the phone muffled to her shoulder again, but she was smiling faintly. "One more damage report, sir. Door pulled off its hinges. Want to know the address?"

"You're going to tell it to me anyway, aren't you?" Lestrade sighed.

"It's on Baker Street. Guess the number."

She triumphantly planted a pin in the map—further east than anything else called in so far, near the very start of the trail. Lestrade stared at it for a moment, then at his silent phone.

They did always stick him with the weird ones, but this was turning out to be a _doozy._


End file.
